A tale of company fundamentals vs sentiment driven pricing: The case of GameStop

By means of the wavelet coherence approach, we study the relationship between the GameStop returns and the sentiment driven pricing, as described by the following indicators: twitter publication count, news publication count excluding twitter, put-call ratio, and short-sale volume. The documented impacts of media-driven sentiment suggest that regulators and policymakers should continuously monitor the investing groups on social media platforms as they can create inefficiency in the market. The put-call ratio strongly and positively affects the GameStop returns prior to the peak of the GameStop saga, being one of the drivers of the January skyrocketing prices. Our results also reveal a positive relationship between the GameStop returns and the short sales volume during the GameStop episode, confirming the short squeeze phenomenon. We highlight the importance for the regulators to consider limiting some predatory short-selling practices, namely "naked'' short selling, as excessive short selling may move the market towards inefficiency. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.